Yoḥannan bar Abgare Yoḥannan bar Ḥegire; Yūḥannā b. al-Aʿraj (d. 905) [Ch. of E.]
Cath. He was the son of a certain Ishoʿ in Baghdad, and he became bp. of Zabe between 884 and 891. In the summer of 900 he was consecrated cath. He died on 16 May 905. A few canons of a synod that he convened in October 900 are quoted in the Nomocanon of ʿAbdishoʿ bar Brikha. The rest of the canons are preserved in Arabic translation only. In Syriac Yoḥannan authored ‘Canons and admonitions (zuhhāre) of the altar service’; in Arabic a treatise on ‘Principles’ (fi al-usūl) and a Letter on the Fast of the Ninevites. In addition, a work on ‘Juridical decisions and rules for division of inheritance’ based on Islamic law is attested for him. This may perhaps be identical with a collection known in present-day scholarship as ‘Syriac texts on Islamic Law’, which is transmitted in both the E.- and W.-Syr. tradition as well as in an Arabic translation. While a marginal note in the Arabic translation attributes the work to Yoḥannan, the E.-Syr. mss. transmit it anonymously, and W.-Syr. mss. attribute it either to a Patr. Yuḥanon (whose identity cannot be ascertained) or to ‘Mor Ignatius and Mor Yuḥanon’. Its authorship, therefore, remains uncertain.
- Assemani, BibOr, vol. 3.1, 238–49. (Canons of the altar service)
- H. Kaufhold, Syrische Texte zum islamischen Recht. Das dem nestorianischen Katholikos Johannes V. bar Aḇgārē zugeschriebene Rechtsbuch (1971).
- H. Kaufhold, ‘Islamisches Erbrecht in christlich-syrischer Überlieferung’, OC 59 (1976), 19–35.
- Baumstark, Literatur, 235.
- Graf, GCAL, vol. 2, 151–52. (for the Arabic writings)
- H. Kaufhold, ‘Über die Entstehung der syrischen Texte zum islamischen Recht’, OC 69 (1985), 54–72.
- W. Selb, Orientalisches Kirchenrecht, vol. 1. Die Geschichte des Kirchenrechts der Nestorianer (von den Anfängen bis zur Mongolenzeit) (Österreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften, phil.-hist. Klasse, Sitzungsberichte 388; 1981), 179 and 181–2.
- A. Vööbus, Important new manuscript sources for the Islamic Law in Syriac. Contributions to the history of jurisprudence in the Syrian Orient (PETSE 27; 1975).